Personally, I’ve always looked at Yadi through a defensive scope. He excels so much there, that anything he gave us on offense was a bonus. If the man hit .250 or lower with zero power and a low OBP, I was still happy because he was so valuable on defense, and I think that defense by itself should make him a Hall Of Famer.

As you know (or should know by now) Yadi is a 2nd pitching coach on the field. Sure, his glove is great, and he’s deserved all those shiny Gold Gloves he has on his shelf (or does he have a trophy room just for them? That’d be cool. Now I want a Yadi house tour!) but to me his value has always been his ability to coax good performances out of his pitchers through his game calling. He knows these guys so well, he makes them better than they would be if they called their own games.

Anyways back to the bat. For everybody who said Yadi was on the downside, it was mainly because of his hitting. Now that he’s off to a hot start, I haven’t heard a peep out of those guys, either for good or bad. It’s likely that they’re waiting for Yadi to crash back to earth so that they can began their chirping again.

Therein lies the question: Will Yadi crash back to earth?

While I don’t think he’ll hit .345 all season, I do think a .290-.300 season is reasonable. He doesn’t have any homers so far, and I don’t expect many, as power was never his game. That 22 homer season in 2012 in my mind, was an outlier, as he hasn’t had more than 14 in any other season and overall has had over 10 homers in only 3 of his 13 seasons.

So .290-.300 with 5-9 homers and 60-80 RBI’s. I think that’s reasonable if his hand is healthy, and so far, so good. Will we ever see 2012 Yadi again? No, and I think it’s unfair to Yadi to keep expecting that. The Yadi we currently have is still quite good, thank you very much.